Diablo 3 Forum Watch #85: Spoilers and the Calm Before the Storm

Posted By: May 13, 2012

With the big day almost upon us, our forums have been smoking. There were upwards of 10,000 people in the forums all yesterday, and as I look right now there are 9500, even on a far-too-sunny Saturday Sunday afternoon. Over 4000 in the Diablo 3 community forum, and 100+ in each of the class Diablo 3 strategy forums, as conversation about specific builds and strategies is starting to blow up. There are even 500+ seeking install assistance in the Tech Support forum.

They can all have a pleasant fan experience since we added spoiler tag code to post titles and have a lot of great moderators (and readers), so there haven’t been any issues with spilled spoilers. This has not been the case on the “official” forums where people being dicks and spamming spoilers right in post titles. That’s very uncool; no one is impressed by spoiler spillers, and it’s not like it’s hard to view them on purpose if we want to.

In non-spoiler news, if you haven’t yet put your guess into the Inferno Full Clear pool, you’d better do it soon since a guess doesn’t count if it’s made post-release. There’s a huge spread of predictions, with serious guesses ranging from 1-120 days, but the majority of fans are guessing in the 7-25 day range. I think the question of when the first Hardcore will do it is much more intriguing, and I just made a prediction thread with a poll for that. Naturally, you can only vote once.

Some fans doubt the wisdom of rushing through the game at all, and a thread asking how fast turned into a nice debate about “why.”

Everyone is waiting for launch date, but not everyone is still waiting for their copy of the game to arrive. Lots of players have reported that their D3CE or standard editions are already in hand, or that they’ve received shipped notifications. Besides numerous emails and PMs from people I know, there are several forum threads full of comments from fans who are eagerly awaiting or who have already received their little bundle of joy. Just hope that all the parts are included; a fair number of fans have reported a lack of guest passes in their D3CE, or even some that were missing the D3 Soundtrack.

Whether you’ve got the game or not, you’re probably looking for a way to occupy yourself until the big night. (Today is Mother’s Day in the US, so you could kill a few hours as you bid farewell to your family.) There are numerous threads full of “can’t wait any longer” sentiments, but this one about how to fill the last 12 hours, is worth a look. Or you might enjoy making a guess in either of fmulder’s helpful Caption This threads. You can choose from the cute girl with the giant D2 box face, or the cashier with the not so cute Diablo 3 box head.

As Elly pointed out a few days ago with her “only 3 more sleeps until D3” comment, after tonight you’ll never have to go to bed again without the option to play one last game of D3 before you rest.

I am so excited to play the game tomorrow… unfortunately I am the unlucky person who did not receive Guest Passes in both my CEs and am missing Soundtrack DVD/CD ;-C Despite of that fact… I just want to play!

As much As I would like to post on the official forums it’s nice to have this kind of community here. I hate the fact that you can’t give your opinions and suggestions to the official battle net forums without having a subscription to their MMO or play Star Craft 2. As much as I loved Star Craft, SC2 did not have enough evolution. It felt the same just with added graphics and more control options. I was fearful that D3 would be the same but I’m delighted to see that it is indeed quite different from D2

In regards to StarCarft, it really depends on what level you play at. At the lowest level of play, no there aren’t really any changes, few new units that were added, few units that were taken out, etc. But then again, at their base, every RTS game is really the same isn’t it? You gather resources to build your structures, you use your structures to train your units, you use your units to kill you opponents. What I am trying to say is that at higher level of play, and once you consider all the implications that new units have and removal of some old units has, the game is entirely different. As someone who is relatively knowledgeble about SC2’s tactics and plays, when I watch StarCraft 1 pro match, it is completely different game. There are some similiarities, yes, but the differences are far greater and more numerous.

still waiting for the copy, but it should arrive tomorrow even though i will be at work then. maybe my neighbour will take it for me or i will have to wait a day longer. Big D is still right around the corner.

As long as I’m home the time is passing quickly; I’m trying to beat Hell in D2 for the first time after all these years and entered the Worldstone Keep with a bone necromancer last night. Hoping to defeat Hell Baal tonight, but good grief Act V Hell is effing hard. There’s no shortage of ways to entertain myself at home, really. Being at work all day on the other hand is much harder, nothing to do but surf the web… with spoiler landmines lurking underfoot. Thanks for the warning about Blizzard’s forum, the trolls posting spoilers are truly one of the lowest forms of life.